I started to write this earlier but I went to a Quicktime VR site that illustrated one of the locations and it hung up my browser.
I don’t often remember my dreams, and this one I only remember the last part. In the part I remember, I was walking down Wellington Street in Ottawa and ticking off the locations (I think I was making mental notes to give somebody directions) – first the National Archives, then the Supreme Court building, and the Confederation building, but then I got a shock.
The front lawn in front of the Parliment buildings had been converted to a gigantic shopping mall food court and high rise condominium. You couldn’t see the Peace Tower. I couldn’t even find the Eternal Flame. And in the strange distortions of geography that happens in dreams, the front lawn took up the entire Parliment Hill (including the areas that are normally filled up by the aforementioned National Archives, Supreme Court and Confederation Building) as well as some of Majors Hill (but with no Rideau Canal between them). And the cliff that the Parliment Building sits on top of had been reduced to a mere garden wall that you could step down to a new swimming beach and playground.
Even worse, the food court all had American fast food outlets like KFC and Taco Bell – no Canadian icons like Harveys or Swiss Chalet or Tim Hortons to be seen.
Somehow in this dream I found out that the development was there because Paul Martin needed the money to keep the budget balanced without cutting medical care.